Energy News

Hedge Funds Are Bidding Up Oil Prices Ever Higher

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The hedge fund hell hounds are now bidding up oil futures. By now, everyone should realize, they are vicious beasts who, far from making life better, are ravening beasts spreading death and destruction. So we are going to have super-high energy prices foisted on us by speculators flooding the oil futures markets and then, when THAT crashes, and it will, thanks to them driving up prices, they will go even more into bankruptcy and cause more economic mayhem! Also, Germany decides to cut down on coal production, seeking to end it in 2019. Though I doubt this will happen.

From Bloomberg:

Crude oil rose above $78 a barrel in New York, nearing a record, on speculation demand will outpace supply as refiners increase fuel production in preparation for the winter.

Bets on rising prices by hedge funds and other speculators rose to a record earlier this month, according to U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data.
*snip*
``There's a lot of speculative money in the market and it's all weighed toward higher prices,'' said Brad Samples, commodity analyst for Summit Energy Services Inc. in Louisville, Kentucky. ``They are latching on to anything that's bullish, which at the moment is the prospect that crude stocks fell last week.''

These stupid hedge funds are like a bunch of hysterical brides-to-be at a Macy's Day May Bridal Sale. They rush into the basement, screaming while tearing at all the dresses on the racks and trampling them on the floor as they shove each other trying to get to the dressing rooms. Restlessly, they go from scheme to screwy scheme. They need schemes. The slippery the scheme, the more they rush towards it. They are like Charlie Chaplin in 'Gold Rush', eating shoes while dreaming of striking it rich. This is the final rasping breath of the concept of capitalism as seen by the United States.

Unlike say, my distant ancestors who got on ships and sailed to England thinking, 'Hey, look at all those defenseless peasants! We can enslave them and make them work for us!' Then, sailing to the Holy Land, they thought, 'Jesus will forgive all my many sins due to the horrible things I do to those peasants so if I kill Muslims, I'll go to heaven and hey, look at all the loot here!' Well, they then came to America saying, 'F--k the King, hey, maybe there is gold in them thar hills!' Well, they killed the natives and killed the beavers (yes, some were trappers) and killed lots of turkeys and chopped down forests and when word got out there was gold in California, they ran off to California to get rich quick.

Restless and dangerous, they always wanted a short cut. And this culture of short cutting things is part of the American way of life. The hedge funders want short cuts to El Dorado. The Spanish, when Columbus discovered the unfortunate people of the New World, had exactly one question: 'Where is all the gold?' And they took it, too. And 90% of the natives died. Back to today yet again, this impulse to loot is very strong. The hedge funds, like the 1980's super-investors, buy up companies and then fire as many people as possible. This is how they make a profit. When there is no more companies to ravage, they move to something else. During this last year, it has been oil futures. When that goes south, they will, like their predecessors did in the 1980's, rush over to the precious metals markets to bid up the price of gold to $1000 an ounce.

From Xinhua:

Saudi Arabia's crude oil production capacity has reached 10.8 million barrels per day (bpd), the country's state oil company Saudi Aramco announced Monday.

The company is sparing no efforts to raise its oil production to meet the market demand, said Armaco's Mid-Year Accountability Report.

The Khursaniyah field is expected to start operations in December 2007, with a capacity of 500,000 bpd of Arabian light crude, said the report, noting the company will boost its exploration of non-associated gas fields.

The Saudis are pumping like crazy and the price of oil is going up. The only thing that can stop this is a recession in the major oil consuming nations which happens to be a certain U.S. of A. So far, people still believe that oil prices will be super low someday so they are clinging to their SUVs to the bitter end. So maybe the hell hounds are on a rich trail leading to a motherlode. Maybe Americans will be terminally stupid about their cars.

The new Saudi oil fields are no Ghawar.

Currently, the estimated proven reserves of Ghawar are about 70 billion barrels Arabian Light crude oil (33 °API). Commercial production from Ghawar began in 1951 and reached a peak of 5.7 million barrels per day in 1981. This was the highest sustained oil production rate achieved by any single oilfield in world history. Cumulative production from the field is about 55 billion barrels. Today, Ghawar remains the world’s most important oilfield with a daily production rate of 4.5 to 5 million barrels per day. This represents nearly 6 percent of global oil production, a remarkable number given Ghawar is one of thousands identified oil fields worldwide.

Ghawar’s amazing oil production has been aided by water injection that was initiated in 1965. Estimated injection rates are in the range of seven million barrels of seawater per day. This has produced an effect known as “water cut,” which is the joint production of oil and water from a well. Ghawar’s water cut currently is about 30-35 percent.

This is all the information we can get since the Saudis hold their Ghawar cards close to their chests. And even if they increase production, consumption in-country is always rising rapidly as the population explodes. When my mother used to work out of Saudi Arabia, the women she met would beg her to smuggle in contraceptives (because in a diplomatic pouch, no one can touch them). There was a death penalty for smuggling contraceptives thirty years ago. Indeed, a princess was stoned to death for trying to run off with a man she loved. Since 1970, the population had doubled several times over.

From En Touch:

There are four oil fields in the world which produce over one million barrels per day. Ghawar, which produces 4.5 million barrels per day, Cantarell in Mexico, which produces nearly 2 million barrels per day, Burgan in Kuwait which produces 1.7 million barrels per day and Da Qing in China which produces 1 million barrels per day. Ghawar is, therefore, extremely important to the world's economy and well being. Today the world produces 82.5 million barrels per day which means that Ghawar produces 5.5 percent of the world's daily production. Should it decline, there would be major problems. As Ghawar goes, so goes Saudi Arabia.

The field was brought on line in 1951. By 1981 it was producing 5.7 million barrels per day. Its production was restricted during the 1980s but by 1996 with the addition of two other areas in the southern area of Ghawar brought on production, Hawiyah and Haradh, the production went back up above 5 million per day. In 2001 it was producing around 4.5 million barrels per day. There have been 3400 wells drilled into this reservoir

So the wonderful new oil fields the Saudis are boasting about are less than 1/10th the Ghawar field. This is right along the Hubbert Oil Peak predictions. Each decade after a peak in discoveries, the fields are half as big as the previous decade until, after 100 years, the new discoveries are less than 1/10th the old discoveries and this is right about when the old discoveries cease oil production and that is why it is called the 'Hubbert Oil PEAK.' Namely, even as the lesser wells start producing, the largest ones from the beginning are endind but both run briefly alongside each other and this gives people the illusion that the oil will gush forever. But it does not. Like all geological forces, it is limited. There is no way around this limitation. Earth is finite.

I said back in 1974 when everyone was hysterical about preparing for the future, 'We must prepare today for tomorrow. In 2000, the real global Hubbert Oil Peak will begin and it will be a lot more expensive to retrofit our society so it runs in a sustainable fashion.' Of course, because Oil Crisis #1 and #2 and #3 were all due to wars and this present one is due to wars, people think we are calling 'wolf' and there is no ravening wolf at the door.

Well, the howls of the hungry hedge fund hell hounds shows us there are wolves at the gates! I bet they will overbid the price of oil and get ruined for it because there is a lot of flexibility in oil use still. People who heat with oil will heat with other forms of energy, for example. People can size down to gas misers instead of bloated gas guzzlers. The flexibility factor is at least 30% which is a huge number. During the first two oil disasters, I rode the subway or used my bikes, for example. We seldom see cyclists these days but in the last year, I have noticed more and more bikes out there! So the belief that we reach the peak and oil will be expensive instantly and all the time is a grave miscalculation.

From Der Spiegel:

Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has decided to close Germany's eight remaining coal mines by 2018, sounding the death knell for a sector that still employs 35,000 people.

However, the phase-out will be reviewed by parliament again in 2012 to see if its still makes economic sense. And the agreement pledges to avoid forced redundancies. "The miners are definitely secure," said Social Democrat leader Kurt Beck, who took part in the talks.

From ICEM:

The future of the German hard-coal industry was given new life early in February. Shaped by a combination of hard bargaining by German Union IGBCE in a top-level national summit and a timely demonstration in Düsseldorf by 10,000 miners, a workable plan was achieved to preserve the industry until at least 2018, and possibly beyond.

Rule of thumb: don't irritate the military too much or if you do, make certain you send most of them far, far away where they can't bother you. Also, don't irritate guys who do heavy physical labor that is very dangerous. They tend to fight back. The roots of union organizing lie in the dark caverns where the riches of the earth are mined. Indeed, the intersection of the military and miners is quite close, actually. They make good soldiers and of course, there is lots of digging involved in classic warfare. Ask any WWI or WWII vet.

China has been madly digging coal in various levels of danger. Just this week, many miners were trapped in a mine that flooded for there are massive floods in Western China this month.

From the BBC:

Flash floods have trapped 69 workers in a coal mine in central China's Henan province, Chinese media has reported.
More than 100 miners were working at Zhijian mine, 200 km (120 miles) west of provincial capital Zhengzhou, when the incident occurred early on Sunday.

The first steam engines were for pumping water out of mines. The Chinese mining methods recall American and European methods of just 60 years ago. Of course, we are horrified at the numbers of deaths.

From MSNBC:

May 22, 2006
ZUOYUN, China - Crews searching for 57 coal miners trapped for five days by an underground flood began pumping water from their mine Tuesday, as residents began to lose hope for a successful rescue.

Of all the professions, this is the most dangerous except in wartime when sailors and soldiers die by the many thousands. In some ways, it would be smart for Germany to cease producing coal and this precious resource can lay in the bosom of Mother Earth for a while. We are madly eating up all these ancient energy resources. The US, for example, has the world's biggest coal reserves. This is a geological accident due to the fact that most of the continent was submerged by warm waters and was also very swampy when life began to conquer the lands. From the Silurian to the Permian, before the greatest of all extinctions, life flourished in dazzling volumes.

But this is a one-time affair. Since the advent of large munching beasts, the amount of rotting vegetation has dropped off and there is less and less opportunity for dead things to make thick blankets of goo to be compressed by geological forces into anthracite.

Then there is nuclear power...
From the New York Times:

A one-sentence provision buried in the Senate’s recently passed energy bill, inserted without debate at the urging of the nuclear power industry, could make builders of new nuclear plants eligible for tens of billions of dollars in government loan guarantees.

Lobbyists have told lawmakers and administration officials in recent weeks that the nuclear industry needs as much as $50 billion in loan guarantees over the next two years to finance a major expansion.

The biggest champion of the loan guarantees is Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy Committee and one of the nuclear industry’s strongest supporters in Congress.

Just to put $50 billion into perspective: Fannie Mae has bought up $47 billion in bad loans in order to bail out the hedge hounds. No one is yelling about that. Also, $50 billion is about 3 months in Iraq. Very, very expensive oil there, I would suggest. So howling about $50 billion is plain silly. Discussing the methodology of nuclear energy is the real issue. I am of two minds. All systems have their downsides. All of them impact the earth in one way or another. As far as that old lady, Mother Nature, is concerned, if something causes mutations, she doesn't mind!

We know from Chernobyl that the landscape is now covered with increasingly lush growth. We being long-lived creatures, we would not do well there but other creatures have no worries. Cockroaches relish such environments and WWIII would probably please them greatly. But we humans have to be most careful with the genie in the nuclear energy bottle! Especially since we love bombing each other every couple of dozen years. Recent history is all about irresponsible people irritatedly trying to destroy each other as much as possible. Therefore, I would nix the nuclear anything.

From Eurobusiness:

Nine member states have written to the European Commission "to express their opposition to a split between gas and electricity production, commercialization and transport networks," a ministry statement said.
*snip*
But EU heavyweights France and Germany are concerned that their major energy groups such as EDF and E.ON would be seriously weakened by such a move.

And the EU struggles constantly with the energy issue. The move to close the Ruhr mines will never happen. The worry about global warming will abate the minute one of any dozen potential volcanoes erupts and we have a caldera event. The US and China are both utterly determined to keep using great amounts of coal so even if all of Europe cuts off that energy source because of CO2, this will barely affect anything. And they still have the problem of Russia: this is their major energy supplier. And the tricks they are using to try to cut things up so there is 'competition' is plain silly since all the world's major energy giants are forming alliances like Exxon/Mobile just for example. The hope of competition is only if one creates new energy systems.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Japan Should Have NO Nuclear Power Plants At All!

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Japan has to keep inflation down as well as its imports down so Japan is now the nation that uses the most nuclear power energy in the world. Even though nuclear power is one of the most dangerous and expensive forms of energy in the world today despite the rise in the cost of oil, nuclear power is very expensive. But it is internal so Japan pays for running these via yen which are depressed so prices don't matter to them, preventing imports matter much more. But this latest earthquake has opened a serious fissure in this fusion scheme. Aside from that, there is the issue of volcanoes: Japan is very much like Indonesia in this regard. Some nuclear plants are near volcanoes.

From Xinhua:

An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale rocked Japan Monday night, according to China's Seismological Monitoring Network.

The quake occurred at 10:17 p.m. Beijing time.

The epicenter, 36.7 degrees north latitude and 135.2 degrees east longitude, was about 200 kilometers away from Kyoto, the network said.

Earlier reports said an earthquake rocked Japan's Niigata Prefecture Monday morning, killing seven elderly people and injuring more than 900.

Earthquake map from IRIS, the government geological survey.

Note in the data here that a series of equal sized quakes were centered on Rat Island in Alaska. These were not deep quakes like the Japanese ones but shallow, at the magic level of 10 km deep. This is the folding and shoving of the topmost layer of the planet's surface. The deeper ones in Japan were probably caused by the bulk of Japan pressing against Asia and some buckling deep inside the Mantle transmitted some energy upwards. The tsunami events are often caused by much shallower quakes. The Boxing Day event was only 10km deep, for example.

The earthquake in yesterday's news was no aftershock, the epicenter was not in the same place. This was a shift in the position of this part of Japan relative to the rest of the planet. Also, after shocks aren't bigger than the original shock. I looked at the photos of the destroyed houses and they were all singular, namely, only one house in a row of houses would be utterly destroyed while on either side, the houses were barely affected. There were also obvious cracks in roads that were caused by one half of it going up while the other subsided. In one picture, it looked like the earth shifted upwards by about a foot. This isn't huge compared to some very nasty earthquakes like the Sumatra Boxing Day quake, for example. But this wasn't a major earthquake, it was a moderately nasty one.

But the interesting thing in the news is what happened to the nuclear power plant sitting nearby this quake. The Japanese government and the people of Japan would like us to think they worry about geological matters and they are very, very careful. But I would suggest their care is false. I used to live in California and even lived right next to the Hayward Fault and the sense of unreality and denial there was obvious. No one made the slightest preparation for a possible earthquake. And since these were sudden and capricious, everyone basically ignored it.

Written by Philbert Ono, Wednesday, 01 February 2006

We can now buy maps of Japan showing known earthquake faults. They are the most detailed I've seen so far. It's high time that they publish such maps. I've been looking for such maps for a long time. And they show what I've expected: That Japan looks like it has more earthquake fault lines than the wrinkles on my 96-year-old grandmother's face.

This is a curious little story I found while researching this latest earthquake story. Like in California, many people think, if they are ignorant, they will be protected by angels or something. In California, home builders will build right over known earthquake faults. The Hayward fault is a prime example. Many a building literally straddles this remakably dangerous fault line. It ends right smack dab in the middle of the UC football stadium! If I were building things, I would not allow anything, not even a shed, be built right on top of a major fault! This is so obvious. The Hayward fault should be a long greenway the whole length!

But it certainly is not. And 99% of the buildings if not 100% have been built since the last 9 mag earthquake. One is due to happen in the next 100 years! When I lived in Berkeley, we also fought the establishment of a nuclear power plant right smack dab on top of a faultline. Geology majors at the school were outraged by this and demonstrated against it along with all of us hippie types. A lot of people made fun of us for fighting this lunatic proposal. We were called 'anti-technological' as if we wanted to stop science.

I, for one, believes that dealing with our desire to live well must be in harmony with reality. Producing electricity with a method that will end up making our lands totally unihabitable for hundreds or thousands of years isn't a good solution to our desire to run airconditioners.

I decided last night to take various maps and make my own very rough and basic map showing the overlap of nuclear power plants, volcanoes and earthquake zones. It is totally insane!

This map shows only the biggest nuclear power plants and only the very biggest of the subduction zones. As the previous writer noted, Japan has fault lines absolutely everywhere. And they have records of more than one 9 mag earthquake! In the last century, there have been several 8-9 mag earthquakes! Starting with the one that destroyed Tokyo during the mid-1920s.

From Yahoo:

The malfunctions and a delay in reporting them fueled concerns about the safety of Japan's 55 nuclear reactors, which have suffered a string of accidents and cover-ups.
*snip*
Japan has a history of nuclear accidents, some of them deadly.

In 2004, five workers at the Mihama nuclear plant in western Japan were killed and six were injured after a corroded pipe ruptured and sprayed plant workers with boiling water and steam. The accident was the nation's worst at a nuclear facility.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires that nuclear plants be built with the capacity to withstand the strongest earthquake to hit its site within 100 years. In a "safe shutdown earthquake," the chain reaction in the reactor stops, but the cooling system keeps running so excess heat is carried away from the core.

Just down the Hudson River from my mountain is NY's biggest nuclear power plant, Indian Point. Once, this valley was very active. Today, it is pretty geologically stable. Even so, we all fret about the possibility of an earthquake. One of the bigger known meteor strike, Panther Mountain, in America lie just a few miles north of Indian Point. Of course, we can't plan for that. Except via our space program, something we have been letting die for quite a while, alas.

The main thing is, earthquakes can happen anywhere. But the major ones are easy to spot. They occur along the major faultlines in the world and we know exactly where these things are, there is no excuse. And Japan knows that major quakes can happen anywhere, any time. The whole place is one big earthquake zone!

And I was taken aback when I heard they have 55 nuclear power stations there. This irritates me no end. I am sick and tired of all the bellyaching going on about Iran or North Korea getting nuclear power. Either everyone stops using nuclear power and making nuclear bombs or they shut up about it. Starting wars to stop nuclear power is pure insanity. And the dangers of Japan making life hell for everyone because of their nuclear power is more important than whether Iran can make a bomb with which they can protect themselves from obvious invaders!

And like Russia with Chernobyl, I don't expect Japan to tell the truth if something goes wrong. When everyone could see the obvious fire in this last mess, the government rushed out to assure everyone, it was a minor matter and nothing was wrong. Now we hear a little more truth. Will the government lie again?

You bet! Our own government has a long record of lying, too. It lied, maliciously and deliberately for many years about nuclear bomb tests! I remember as a child, being warned to beware of the wind blowing from the east when we lived east of the nuclear bomb testing grounds during the 1950s. My parents knew these bombs were very dangerous but they and everyone in the government who had top secret clearance, all lied about these dangers. No one was punished when the truth came out. I tried telling people about this when I was a child and the adults thought I was nuts.

Here is a map showing the density of earthquakes in Japan:

From Japan Times:

Sunday, May 23, 2004

Japan's deadly game of nuclear roulette

By LEUREN MORET

Of all the places in all the world where no one in their right mind would build scores of nuclear power plants, Japan would be pretty near the top of the list.
*snip*
On July 7 last year, the same day of my visit to Hamaoka, Ishibashi warned of the danger of an earthquake-induced nuclear disaster, not only to Japan but globally, at an International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics conference held in Sapporo. He said: "The seismic designs of nuclear facilities are based on standards that are too old from the viewpoint of modern seismology and are insufficient. The authorities must admit the possibility that an earthquake-nuclear disaster could happen and weigh the risks objectively."

After the greatest nuclear power plant disaster in Japan's history at Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, in September 1999, large, expensive Emergency Response Centers were built near nuclear power plants to calm nearby residents.

After visiting the center a few kilometers from Hamaoka, I realized that Japan has no real nuclear-disaster plan in the event that an earthquake damaged a reactor's water-cooling system and triggered a reactor meltdown.

Like the former Soviet Union after Chernobyl, Japan will become a country suffering from radiation sickness destroying future generations, and widespread contamination of agricultural areas will ensure a public-health disaster. Its economy may never recover.

Considering the extreme danger of major earthquakes, the many serious safety and waste-disposal issues, it is timely and urgent -- with about half its reactors currently shut down -- for Japan to convert nuclear power plants to fossil fuels such as natural gas.

This article is three years old. People have been blowing the whistle for a while. But the media has very little effect on the guys running Japan. These political people are totally owned by the great industrial powers and live in fear of the far right wing who assassinate politicians like the mayor of Nagasaki recently. They protect the Yakuza and they scheme to make themselves rich even if it means driving the average Japanese voter insane or making workers want to commit suicide in mass numbers.

They frankly, don't give a hoot if they destroy swaths of Japan any more than our rulers thought twice about spreading plutonium into all the milk cows downwind of the nuclear bomb tests! Indeed, our rulers are arming us for WWIII right now and they don't care, nay, they PLAN to kill most of us! This is their Final Solution for global warming! And the drain on natural resources.

The water cooling systems of nuclear reactors, in a 9 mag earthquake, have a very high chance of failure. Are all the pipes feeing in the water, flexible? Is the water source safe? In major earthquakes, wells can suddenly dry up! Rivers change course and even flow backwards! The fragility of plumbing is notorious. Did the designers of these nuclear plants first put their plumbing designs to the test buy building a mock model and subjecting it to a violent quake? I seriously doubt this. If they did, they should publicize these tests so we can examine it to see what happened.

The Kobe earthquake shows that these things can happen anywhere, any time. The Northridge quake in LA (one of my sisters lost everything in that quake) was a previously unknown fault, for example.

From the BBC:

The nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979, and Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in 1986, prompted more Japanese to question their own nuclear industry, but they remained a tiny and powerless minority.

The real catalyst for the growth of the anti-nuclear movement in Japan has been a string of accidents, safety lapses and cover-ups which have led to a collapse of public confidence in the way the industry is run.

The accident at Tokaimura set off a self-sustaining nuclear reaction

In 1999 two workers were killed and hundreds of homes had to be evacuated after an uncontrolled nuclear reaction took place at the Tokaimura plant north of Tokyo.

It turned out that the workers had been mixing dangerous quantities of uranium in an open tank, in clear defiance of safety regulations. They were Japan's first nuclear casualties since 1945.

Humans invariably make mistakes. It is our natures. Setting up systems that destroys us if we stumble is pure insanity. The only way these things can work is if there is an open system meaning NO SECRETS! This goes quadruple for nuclear weapons. Millions of women including members of my own extended family, who lived their lives downwind from these nuclear bomb tests, have died or are dying from the breast cancer epidemic which was caused by our own government lying about nuclear bombs.

Birth defects and breast cancer increased in Pennsylvania after the Three Mile Island disaster. I lived to the east of that and when I heard, on the news, what was happening, I and my neighbors who had small children we were breast feeding, we all decamped to upstate New York to avoid the plume. Everyone was told to not panic but I didn't believe a word they said and ran like hell. I never listen to government assurances! For good reason. They lie.

The warning systems set up due to popular demand, to warn people near these plants, are all fake. They have to be activated in order to warn people and if the people running these plants don't want to activate them, they don't sound an alarm. And never, do the managers want to activate these alarms! Ergo: the only warning most people will ever have is a black cloud of nuclear destruction! In the case of this latest mess in Japan, it was a non-nuclear cloud. But how can one tell? By listening to government officials?

We can see the problem here!

From the BBC:

Existing regulations require nuclear power plants to be able to withstand an earthquake of magnitude 6.5, although the government now wants to raise that to 6.9.

Why not raise it to a 7.5 mag? Or better yet, this being a land with 9+ mag earthquakes, even higher? And this is why all the plants in Japan should be terminated. They are all vulnerable to failure.

Then there is the issue of all those volcanoes in Japan!

Distribution of volcanoes and volcanic arcs in Japan. Numbered volcanoes of the Southwest Honshu Arc are: 1. Abu, 2. Sanbe, 3. Oki-dogo, 4. Daisen, and 5. Kannabe. Abu, Oki-dogo, and Kannabe are Holocene shield volcanoes. Sanbe is a caldera that last erupted in 1650 BC. Daisen is a Holocene stratovolcano. The names and status of the other volcanoes are given below. Map based on Simkin and Siebert (1994).

Japan has a long record of documented historic eruptions starting with the eruption of Aso in 710 AD. Aso has proven to be the country's most active volcano with more than 165 eruptions. Japan's largest historic eruption was at Towada in 915 AD. Tephrochronology is commonly used in Japan and allows for a more detailed and balanced view of volcanic activity over the last 10,000 years. Japan leads the world's volcanic regions with 1,274 dated eruptions and 94 volcanoes with dated eruptions. Japan also leads the world with 41 large (VEI greater than or equal to 4) explosive eruptions in the last 10,000 years. The eruption of Kikai 6,300 years ago was one of the largest (VEI=7) eruptions on Earth in the Holocene. Pyroclastic flows, one of the deadliest volcanic hazards, have occurred at 28% of Japan's eruptions.

Just as we ignore Mt. Rainier, a major very active volcano, so it is with Japan. Mt. Fuji can easily blow up and become a caldera! Indeed, it is well within the parameters of such an event! This could eliminate Tokyo, for example. And of course, there is a huge nuclear power plant within easy reach of this dangerous volcano. Hot mud flows, lava flows, massive dust events, super-hot gases: just like Pintubo in the Philippines flattened our military base there, or like Mexican or Central American volcanoes suddenly, with no warning at all, don't merely erupt but actually explode. Volcanoes don't merely build higher and higher, they also can become twice as short in a matter of minutes!

From Rekihaku:

There are many volcanoes in the Japanese archipelago. Of the roughly 1,500 active volcanoes in the world, 108 are in Japan. This exhibition seeks to illustrate important features of volcanic disasters by focusing on the representative cases of Mounts Fuji, Unzen, and Asama.

Mt. Fuji is the largest volcano in Japan. During a very large eruption that occurred about 300 years ago (1707), abundant ash and scoria were ejected over an area reaching as far as Edo. Mt. Unzen in Kyushu is another active volcano. It had been queit for 192 years before it erupted again in 1990. Mt. Asama is yet another example of very active and dangerous volcanoes. Its eruption in 1783 caused enormous disaster.

Here is a picture made 200 years ago after a great quake/tsunami hit Japan:

Japan has a host of such volcanoes. Hell, so do we! Mt. Rainier can lose 50% of its height in a matter of minutes just like Mt. St. Helens shrank in less than 1 minute! I saw the devastation myself. Most awesome. Anything near it was buried under tons of ash. Indeed, the US has had eruptions in Yellowstone that have covered a good part of the USA with mile-deep ash over the course of several annihilating eruptions!

And per square mile, Japan is, next to Indonesia, the most densely populated land when it comes to volcanoes that can turn into calderas! And like Indonesia, Japan is very densely populated. Perhaps the world powers should be demanding Japan, not North Korea and Iran, stop their nuclear power programs.

As a side note, here is an interesting story from Australia:

Residents of Australia's biggest city, Sydney, have been urged to pack a survival kit to prepare for a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

The local authority wants people to put together an emergency "Go-Bag", including maps, food and a radio.

Officials have denied the campaign is a government attempt to create fear and enhance national security credentials ahead of elections due later this year

What is funny is, neither California nor Japan are issuing such a warning. The need to ignore reality is very strong in both places. I will note that there is some alarm building as microquakes along the San Andreas are rising except in the middle sector which has zero quakes, not even 1.5 ones right now. This is not a good sign. It means all the other sectors are shaking because the middle is bound up! And it will spring into action with absolutely no warning. And it is the section that runs athwart all the water pipelines and canals feeding LA.

Culture of Life News Main Page

US Energy Consumption And Importation Continues To Climb

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Bernanke believes that inflation is imaginary and emotional and not caused by food or energy rising in cost as the dollar collapses. The US is still in full denial about energy costs and the need to retrofit our culture so it is energy efficient. Renewable fuels gets lots of lip service but is still only 2% of our energy needs and our energy needs are the biggest on earth even as we import more and more energy.

From MSNBC:

Cities including New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Portland, Ore., are grappling with higher-than-normal temperatures this week. In New York, where the mercury was already rising uncomfortably at dawn, high temperatures were forecast in the 90’s through Wednesday.

The latest heat waves follow similar patterns that had air conditioners humming at full blast in portions of the West last week.

Idaho Power, which supplies energy for southwestern Idaho and parts of eastern Oregon, hit a record for energy use last week amid a stifling heat wave. Spokesman Dennis Lopez said company officials believe the growing demand is due to a mix of population growth and increased air conditioning usage, although hard numbers are not yet available.

I know that Wall Street and our government will celebrate rising sales from June. But a lot of the hard goods purchased were air conditioners thanks to record heat waves in much of the country. Our GNP will rise due to more money pouring into purchasing higher and higher priced energy. The gross national product is a very crude indicator of economic activity. It merely shows that more money is being spent on various things without clearly showing which things are good and which things are bad. And for any system, spending more and more for energy is a drain and the GNP is meaningless unless it seperates energy from economic activity figures. Then the real determination of economic health can be the ratio of energy used for gross national products that are actually manufactured or grown.

So if a nation is wasting energy frivolously or using it poorly due to out-dated infrastructure, this is deducted from the GNP and growth numbers. When we boast that our economy 'grew' because we spend more, this gives a sense of false prosperity because it isn't growing if this is merely expenditures on more energy to make the same outcome in production of other things like grains, making aluminum or transporting goods.

For example, the use of trucks rather than trains to move many goods is inefficient if one is concerned about energy use yet the US uses a very poorly-coordinated transportation system that relys heavily on trucks that use, per pound carried, more energy than systems used in Japan, for example. Not to mention the pollution.

From Agora Financal:

“Electricity rates nationwide, long considered a bargain, are going to increase substantially in the years ahead,” reports Barron’s.

Electricity costs will be the one-two punch to our energy-rich lifestyle. Bernanke just told us that inflation is a matter of emotional perception and if we all clap our hands, Tinkerbell will come alive again. It baffles me that adults who are my age and well educated can be this stupid and be in charge of something as important and the world's biggest economic money printing system. The price of energy of all sorts will climb at home and abroad because energy is finite and our appetites are infinite. The vast bulk of US electrical energy is produced at home and the means we use is coal which isn't free but is pulled out of the earth using lots of equipment that consumes oil which is rising in cost across the planet.

Here is a pie chart from the Canadian government energy program web page:

The US is rich in coal and we generate 45% of our electricity from coal that is mined and then sent to power plants via train. Processing, handling and transporting coal raises the cost greatly. American rail service is the joke of the developed world. It is very inefficient and slow. Most other nations pour national resources into their rail systems but not the US which focuses mostly on building highways for energy guzzling vehicles such as trucks and cars.

Burning coal in mostly inefficient power plants produces lots of pollution and a tremendous amount of CO2. We are the number one producer of CO2 gases and this is why our government has refused to sign the Koyoto Accords and it is a perfect feed-back condundrum. Namely, the hotter it gets due to global warming, the more coal we burn to keep our air conditioners running and this causes more warming so we burn more coal to keep cool. On top of this, global warming means the watersheds feeding most of our rivers are drying up so the hydro power component shrinks as the coal use grows. As it is, with many of our rivers dammed, hydro power's share is dropping and is now only 14%.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Kilowatts, gallons — they all add up. Energy is now sucking money out of Americans' bank accounts at a record level — hitting $612 billion at an annual rate in the month of April, the last month of data. Over the past two years, energy bills as a share of income have risen and are now at their highest point since 1987, but still below the levels of the 1970s and early 1980s. For low-income households, some economists estimate energy consumption as a percentage of income is closing in on 10 percent.

"It shows up in weaker real incomes, since it results in higher rates of inflation" says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "If it rises much more, it will become a significant problem, particularly for lower-income households."

Last week added to the misery. On Friday, the price of crude oil rang in at $70.68 a barrel, the first time in a year that it's been over $70. Just before the Fourth of July weekend, gasoline prices are about $2.96 a gallon nationally, up 11.3 cents from a year ago, or 3.9 percent higher. This is down from a peak of $3.22 set May 21

Walmart is hurting due to all this. Their costs running their stores is rising rapidly due to energy use and this is encouraging them to use green energy solutions more and more but their customer base lives in very energy ineffienct homes and nearly universally drives gas guzzling vehicles. Every single person I know who lives in very poor housing and is struggling to pay bills still drives gas guzzlers. They are quite proud of these things and look down on anyone driving a thrifty car.

This maniacal need to feel superior means they will cut back on health care, education and house repairs to keep driving their SUVs. On top of this, since smarter and wealthier people are shedding their gas guzzling vehicles, these all filter down to the lower classes as prices for them drops while prices on small cars rise sharply.

I remember when the wars started. People all over the place were very excited not over the possiblity of Saddam having those fantasy WMD but the possiblity that we could steal all of Iraq's oil. More than one person said with happy satisfaction, 'Now gasoline will be cheap again!' But this was a delusion. It is nice that Australia admits the entire enterprise was an illegal grab for oil. But the wars now consume more oil than they save so world oil prices are relentlessly rising. The more our military tries to steal it, the dearer it gets.

From McClatchey:

You think your gasoline costs are high? Every time the price at the pump jumps a nickel, it causes budgetary heartburn for the U.S. Air Force, whose gas-guzzling fleet of nearly 6,000 aircraft devours about 7 million gallons of fuel a day.

The cost of a fill-up for a B-52 bomber, an eight-engine behemoth that holds nearly 48,000 gallons of jet fuel, can easily surpass $100,000. A sleek F-16 fighter sucks up more than $300 worth of fuel a minute when it kicks in its afterburners and blasts through the sound barrier.
*snip*
Aviation fuel accounts for more than 80 percent of the Air Force’s total energy bill. In 2006, the service spent more than $5.8 billion for jet fuel, more than twice the $2.6 billion spent in 2003.

The price of oil goes up and down but the main trend for the last 7 years has been relentlessly upwards. This is simple: war drives up the price of oil and we are at war all over the place, flying bombing raids on tents of sheep herding peasants, driving all over Iraq, getting blown up by IEDs, sailing not one but three of our fleets (um, none are protecting the US anymore) up and down in front of a major oil producing nation, Iran. This burns a fabulous amount of oil which is imported from places like where we are parading our fleets.

This doesn't show up much on our financial registers since most of the oil purchased by our military is bought outside the US so it is in our budget but not our import figures. If we considered these oil purchases to be imports then the gross amount of oil we buy will look a lot worse.

Our extravagant use of oil, wasting $100 of fuel a MINUTE when not breaking the sound barrier, just to spend around 1 hour, flying to and around those tents and mud huts in Afghanistan and Iraq on our futile shock and awe missions means each plane is costing us $6,000 a mission? The Pentagon doesn't like to talk about money, it likes to spend money and its portion of the budget has grown tremendously during this foolish and fatal 'war on terror'. The energy consumed by three fleets milling around the oil wells in the Gulf use up tremendous amounts of energy in a matter of days.

This is causing the price of oil to rise dramatically for two reasons: menacing or attacking oil pumping nations reduces world oil production and this also consumes vast quanties of oil so this doubles the effect.

From Agora Financial:

Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned oil and gas company, announced yesterday that it needs help developing the world’s largest offshore natural gas field.It is reputedly close to finalizing a deal that would bring Norwegian, French and American companies in to help drill the Shtokman field — a 540-square-mile field with up to 3.2 trillion cubic meters of gas off the Kola Peninsula.

Russia will work with these foreign companies but they won't be allowed to be an extention of the European or US empires. Like China, Russia will probably get a controlling stake in the winner of this lottery which is, I heard, Total. Slowly, Russia is dragging the Europeans into its sphere of influence. The recent business of putting US missiles in Eastern Europe to menace Russia only made Russia more determined to dominate Europe via energy production. And as always, power grows out of the barrel of a gun and no matter who develops the energy fields in Russian territory, Russia controls access and transportation of this energy.

Right now, the euro buys oil much cheaper than the dollar. The dollar's decline is directly connected to our gross misuse of energy. We import a lot of energy. Even so, Europe is scrambling to upgrade to better energy systems. They are fearful of falling under the power of Russia who is now the world's #2 oil exporting nation right after Saudi Arabia. Europe wants to pretend they are an empire still. They use NATO as their proxy for the previous empires and rush off to invade Muslim oil pumping nations, hoping to secure energy for themselves that isn't attached to one of the world's most fearsome military powers.

From Agora Financial:

The Hague, Netherlands, announced recently that 4,000 homes within its city limits will be heated in the 2008/09 winter by the power of a 170 F well found 7,200 feet below the city. If effective, the city will have the largest geothermal heating system in the country, and one of the cheapest for its end-users.

All buildings should be required to use geothermal systems for cooling and heating. Eventually I am going to install this here. And then there is solar and wind energy. One would imagine our government and the people would be pushing as hard as possible in light of what is coming, to extend this and to require it. It is life and death for us to change over to solar energy systems. Even if it is only used during the day, it will cut down CO2 production and the maniac use of non-renewable coal. But far from forcing builders to incorporate passive and active solar power and geothermal heating, it is the opposite: communities are forbidding the use of these systems!

From the Wall Street Journal:

n Arizona, a man was recently ordered by his homeowners' association to take down a solar water-heating device from his roof or face a daily fine. In upstate New York, neighbors fought the installation of a wind turbine tower on a resident's 11-acre property, delaying the project by nearly a year. Even former vice president and outspoken environmental advocate Al Gore had trouble getting solar panels and a geothermal unit approved for his Nashville home. A local zoning board initially wouldn't consider the application for the solar panels. It then took an appeal, several redesigns and a property inspection before they were approved eight months later. (The community recently revised its ordinance to allow the devices.)

Instead of focusing on the future, everyone is focused on the past. It is interesting to me to see the renovation movement evolve into a very stupid preservation thing whereby the prudes running things ignore reality and have a romantic notion about life in the past which was rather brutish. We see pictures of Victorians and ignore what they are wearing which is quite a lot of clothing. When I made speeches about renovating Victorian row houses and brownstones, my speech went like this: 'These buildings are potentially the best solution to energy conservation efforts. They have adjoining walls and the houses are much longer than wide so they are very efficient. Add solar energy units to the flat roofs and seeing how these houses have subways or other public transportation systems means they are the buildings of the future!'

Indeed, unlike towers, they don't need elevators, for example. They are low so there isn't a high population density which causes overheating as well as increased energy use as each story climbs higher. But the push to save the valuable row house communities built by thrifty Victorians became a hysterical attempt at keeping modernism down. Changing the windows is a #1 priority in all these buildings! They need double or even triple pane windows! They need better doors and a host of other improvements. Laws forbidding this are a crime. The 'look' of a community will be accepted if everyone does it. It is a terrible waste to have to cover windows with plastic to keep down heating bills.

People always want to live in a fabled golden age. The desire to ignore onrushing reality is a sickness. Destroying the value of row house neighborhoods in a romantic bid to stop time is foolish. For our cities are not toys or museums, they are also engines of our economy and our economy is woefully inefficient and poorly run and this is going to end our empire. Running our affairs in this childish fashion while waging hotter and hotter wars over oil, talking hotter and hotter with Russia, poking at China, all this is going to bring WWIII to our nice row house communities which will end up blasted as flat as Hiroshima if we continue to be very, very stupid about energy use.

I live in the mountains. I have neighbors who fought a program by an energy consortium to put windmills on the tallest mountain here. They didn't want these set up because it would spoil their enjoyment of nature. Yet not one of these foolish romatics have solar panels on their mansions. They have nothing at all. They simply use energy merrily while complaining about its rising costs. Absolutely nothing is being built here that is good for the future because everyone thinks we can live in Paradise while turning other places into hell.

Only this is turning our entire planet into hell. Thanks to the CO2.

Here are some graphs and reports from both the government of the US and Canada concerning our energy use:

This graph shows clearly that oil production in Mexico and Canada have moved upwards while oil pumping in the US has dropped. Worse, Mexico's production is no longer rising. 1974 was our own Hubbert Oil Peak and despite all the oil discoveries and the new methods for extracting oil, it is dropping significantly every decade. It has dropped nearly 30%. Yet we live as if we are the world's biggest oil producers. Like the impulse to play around with our housing, pretending we are indifferent to costs of energy, it is very hard for us to change habits and our way of thinking which is, we are the Lords of the Earth and can do as we please and there is no downside to all this.

From the State Department:

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From the government of Canada's energy report:

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It may seem tedious but l like including the raw data. This is my own personal historic record. When I go through these numbers, it establishes in my mind, how things work. It is much deeper than a mere graph.

This government report to Congress has nearly the same first paragraph each year as we can see here. And nothing every changes as our political process remains firmly set against thinking realistically about anything. Every year, Congress hears about the budget deficits, the trade deficits, the energy deficits and does absolutely nothing. The media mocks Al Gore who tries desperately to do something. They find something, anything, to critisize when he tries to show a different path.

And even he is filled with romantic delusions. The recent global energy-intensive/destructive to the enviornment rock extravaganza was totally insane. The culture is very energy-consuming and we want to have fun as much as possible. We don't care if this turns into a Burning Man festival from hell.

From the EIA:

North America produced over 14 million barrels per day (MMbbl/d) of crude oil and natural gas liquids in 2000: Canada (2.7 MMbbl/d), Mexico (3.5 MMbbl/d), and the United States (8.1 MMbbl/d).

Oil production (crude oil and natural gas liquids) in Canada and Mexico is forecast to grow through 2010, while US production is forecast in high and low economic growth cases to be somewhat lower than 2000. Canadian oil output is expected to reach 3.7 MMbbl/d, Mexican oil production is projected at around 4.6 MMbbl/d, and US oil production is forecast at 7.4-7.5 MMbbl/d.

In 2000 U.S. gas production was 19.4 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), compared to 5.9 Tcf in Canada and 1.7 Tcf in Mexico.

Natural gas production in all three North American countries is forecast to grow significantly through 2010. Mexican gas production is forecast to nearly double by 2010, to 3.2 Tcf, while Canadian gas production grows to 7 Tcf and U.S. gas production is forecast to reach about 23 Tcf to 24 Tcf (based on economic growth cases).

Natural gas heats many homes that have crummy windows and doors as well as poorly insulated walls. The government should be mandating better windows and doors and working to improve energy efficiency of housing and pushing to move people towards and not away from cities which means strengthening public transportation systems while weakening autobahns.

This madcap refusal to do the right thing has serious consequences. The Canadian loonie is rising against the dollar precisely because we import so much energy from Canada. The dollar's drop won't fix our import/export figures because its fall is aggravating these same things. So long as we consume not only more goods but more energy than we produce, we won't see a trade surplus for all eternity.

From the EIA:

The United States is a major, and growing, net importer of energy. In 2000, the United States had net energy imports of over 25 quadrillion Btu (quads), up from around 12 quads in 1980 and 14 quads in 1990.

Both Canada and Mexico are net energy exporters (5 quads and 3 quads, respectively).In 2000, about 36 percent of total U.S. net energy imports came from Canada (27 percent) and Mexico (9 percent).

Canada provided almost all United States net natural gas imports in 2000. These imports accounted for about 15 percent of U.S. gas consumption in 2000.

Here is an equally fantastical chart from Germany. We aren't the only ones it total denial. All energy consuming powers are in denial.

Click here to see Der Spiegel's graph showing the history of oil consumption.

This is a very pretty chart that is as childish a projection into the future that I have ever seen. Not only does it assume the Hubbert Oil Peak doesn't exist, it assumes, even if it does exist, the oil won't go down rapidly as all those millions of pumps we are installing everywhere won't have an effect, the consumption of this oil won't rise because I am assuming, we will use biofuels.

This ignores the reality of biofuels: terrible inflation in food and energy costs that will kill off much of the lower 1/3rd of the earth's population which happens to be those very people we are now fighting in Iraq, for example. The angry peasants who are driving up the price of oil by not cooperating with their annihilation by the ruling elites. In Nigeria, in Iraq, all over, they are very restive and resisting the power being applied to them.

From the Federal Reserve Bankers in NY:

The unresponsiveness of U.S. import prices to a dollar depreciation leads Goldberg and Dillon to conclude that U.S. imports will play "only a minor role" in the easing of the U.S. trade deficit via the dollar effects channel. "Any substantial trade balance adjustment achieved through exchange rate changes," the authors observe, "must come instead from a reduction in export prices"—that is, from a reduction in the foreign currency prices that consumers abroad pay for U.S. goods.

The authors' quantitative analysis shows that export prices do in fact react more strongly than import prices to a dollar depreciation. As a result, the quantity of U.S. goods exported to other countries will rise with a weaker dollar. Nevertheless, Goldberg and Dillon caution that without a decline in the consumption of imports, the growth in exports required to close the U.S. trade deficit through a dollar depreciation will be immense.

They are saying we will have to export a lot of stuff to make up for our imports and since over 7% of our imports is energy and since Japan won't buy so much as a pin from us, we have to sell to other nations but this means making things they want and they seem to want only weapons from us.

From IHT:

In an astonishing heist, guards at a bank here made off with more than a quarter-billion dollars on Wednesday, according to an official at the Interior Ministry.

The robbery, of $282 million from the Dar Es Salaam bank, a private financial institution, raised more questions than it answered, and officials were tight-lipped about the crime. The local police said two guards engineered the robbery, but an official at the Interior Ministry said three guards were involved.

Both confirmed that the stolen money was in American dollars, not Iraqi dinars. It was unclear why the bank had that much money on hand in dollars, or how the robbers managed to move such a large amount without being detected.

And you can bet, this money will be used to buy weapons. The more we try to control everyone so we can continue to live romantic lives using double the energy everyone else uses, we will be fighting forever. And these people we are fighting are very determined. The more we use oil, the more money flows into the Middle East and the more explosive it becomes. And this is all evolving towards a massive war of dominance with many players taking advantage of the collapse of US power as we go bankrupt trying to live as if we are an empire that is the world's workshop instead of the world's biggest beggars.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Bernanke Lies About Inflation And Oil Yet Again

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Bernanke decided to defend his definition of 'inflation' that leaves out energy and food. He then pats himself of his scaly back and flaps his leathery wings and wipes the blood off his claws to gleefully say, energy and food have NO effect on inflation! Well, you dimwit, if you exclude them from the calculations, then of course, they don't show up! DUH. But they show up in the real world. I see it in my own bills and it is now so bad with oil heading to an astonishing 80$ a barrel, um, it is killing the economy and other prices are dropping because this is nasty old seventies' style 'stagflation.' And I am not talking about balloons at bachelor parties.

Bernanke says many dumb or asinine things, it is hard to keep up with them all:

The Board staff employs a variety of formal models, both structural and purely statistical, in its forecasting efforts. However, the forecasts of inflation (and of other key macroeconomic variables) that are provided to the Federal Open Market Committee are developed through an eclectic process that combines model-based projections, anecdotal and other "extra-model" information, and professional judgment. In short, for all the advances that have been made in modeling and statistical analysis, practical forecasting continues to involve art as well as science.

HAHAHA! He admits the entire sheebang is really an 'art' and tis a very dark art indeed! They use 'anecdotal' information? HAHAHA. What, they ask their neighbors about inflation? Eh? And they all say, 'Hell, gasoline, energy and food don't matter one whit, we all buy new computers every week and houses every month!' Right.

Well, the neighbors are probably all powerful, rich people. I would suggest the gang who makes up 'inflation rates' out of total ficticious cloth go with me shopping, driving and chatting with everyone who is flipping out over the horror of dropping house values coupled with skyrocketting fuel, energy and food prices!

They will get an earful and I promise I will protect them from lynching when they visist a bunch of retirees whose fixed SS checks have fallen behind real inflation to the tune of dropping about...20% in the last seven years! I remember when we got our first inflation hike with my husband's SSDI checks: it was 1%! The price of essentials went up more than 4% that year. Back in 2000, I could heat my house with natural gas. Today, forget about it!

I am still young and spry enough to haul out the axe and chainsaw and make my own energy but it is hard labor, very hard. But at least I can eat and have a roof over my head. But thanks to the Dark Arts of the Bernanke gang, we have a new way to calculate life costs and they assume if we can't buy steak, we buy hamburger and if we can't get this thanks to the fake inflation figures and we end up eating dog food made in China, then they assume THERE IS NO INFLATION since we simply 'opt down' to something 'similar.'

Gads, maybe I shouldn't protect these gangsters when taking them on a tour to learn about inflation first hand. I look to the Chinese for guidance here. They have trials and then execute inept or corrupt officials.

Here he explains how he and his goofy gang wave wands and use the Dark Arts to figure out inflation and future forecasts:

Implications of Anchored Inflation Expectations

Why do we care about the variability of inflation expectations? As my colleague Rick Mishkin recently discussed, the extent to which inflation expectations are anchored has first-order implications for the performance of inflation and of the economy more generally (Mishkin, 2007). Mishkin illustrated this point by considering the implications of the fact that inflation expectations have become much better anchored over the past thirty years for the estimated coefficients of the conventional Phillips curve, which I define here to encompass specifications that use lagged values of inflation to proxy for expectations or other sources of inflation inertia.

As he noted, many studies of the conventional Phillips curve find that the sensitivity of inflation to activity indicators is lower today than in the past (that is, the Phillips curve appears to have become flatter);1 and that the long-run effect on inflation of "supply shocks," such as changes in the price of oil, also appears to be lower than in the past (Hooker, 2002). These findings are of much more than academic interest.

To the extent that the Phillips curve may have flattened, inflation will now tend to be more stable than in the past in the face of variations in aggregate demand. (Of course, this can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether inflation expectations are anchored in the vicinity of price stability.)

Likewise, a lower sensitivity of long-run inflation to supply shocks would imply that such shocks are much less likely to generate economic instability today than they would have been several decades ago. Notably, the sharp increases in energy prices over the past few years have not led either to persistent inflation or to a recession, in contrast (for example) to the U.S. experience of the 1970s.

These guys all hang out with the Skull and Bones magicians like Bush and Kerry. They use Geronimo's skull to open Portals to the Outer Darkness. They then ask the demonic creatures who look like hedge fund hell hounds, 'How can I get filthy rich?' And the watchful eyes glow red in the darkness which is rivven by lightning bolts and the creatures hiss, 'Cheat the elderly and infirm out of their inflation benefits and then inflate currencies by making up numbers and then giving them to our fellow hell hounds on earth.'

And so it was. The 'expectations of inflation' are pure silliness. The only people who control inflation are...THIS GANG OF MAGICIANS! They wave their wands and dollars appear. They then hand this over to banks and 'sell' them to China, Japan, the oil pumping nations and anyone else and to keep the value high, they have to pretend THEY AREN'T DOING THIS!

The magic numbers are supposed to disappear. If the people buying the numbers created by the Federal Reservists think Bernanke and his fellow coven wand wavers are pulling a fast one and making up money out of their asses, the value of this money drops and is the value of the dollar going up or down? Wow. Voila, inflation!

And inflation happens because the Fed and its howling pack of dark fellow hellions are creating money out of thin air and the oil nations are demanding more money for it and since the Chinese Dragon has huge sacks of these dollars and since Miz Japan has dollars to burn, all of these people are bidding up the price of oil and it is causing global inflation! DUH.

Japan, like the US, loves to pretend there is no inflation. But there is and Japan has woefully inflated the yen and they laugh as they print more yen and it is the weakest of all manufacturing nations currencies and Japan is the world's number one industrial-TRADE SURPLUS nation! But inflation doesn't show up in Japan despite this, the extra yen are all spent by and held for, the Government. But here, the Federal Reserve isn't part of the government. They are a private bank that maliciously sets rates of all sorts and cheats the elderly with glee.

Barnacle Bernanke also continues to ignore what happened to 'inflation' since China became the Workhouse of the World:

Similar logic explains the finding that inflation is less responsive than it used to be to changes in oil prices and other supply shocks. Certainly, increases in energy prices affect overall inflation in the short run because energy products such as gasoline are part of the consumer's basket and because energy costs loom large in the production of some goods and services. However, a one-off change in energy prices can translate into persistent inflation only if it leads to higher expected inflation and a consequent "wage-price spiral." With inflation expectations well anchored, a one-time increase in energy prices should not lead to a permanent increase in inflation but only to a change in relative prices. A related implication is that, if inflation expectations are well anchored, changes in energy (and food) prices should have relatively little influence on "core" inflation, that is, inflation excluding the prices of food and energy.

If he ignores food and energy then inflation is hardly noticable. And of course, fixing inflation meant sending all our exportable jobs overseas and then re-importing the goods with the value added elsewhere and this is how energy inflation was eliminated. Inflation has been raging everywhere and proof of this is simple: all world banks and anyone desiring to lure money into their banks or businesses have to offer higher and higher and higher rates of return!

The Bank of Japan can't attract even flies to the dead carcass of the yen. It returns nearly nothing! But they don't care, they use dollars and euros to do business! The US tried the 1% return route and savings in the US collapsed totally and now run $200+billion a year in the red and dropping way beyond negative numbers.

As housing values collase, the negative numbers rise and the only way the banks can survive is to attract savers and then offer them +6% on 1 year CDs. The howling hedge funds offered investors returns of +10% but then this turned out to be a mirage, a dream, and is now a nightmare of 80% LOSSES on capital.

The downward spiral we are in wasn't caused by speculators, it was caused by the fanastical frantic wand waving lunatics in the Federal Reserve itself. If they were honest about inflation in 2003 when they dropped rates 3% below the real rate of inflation, we wouldn't have had this stupid housing bubble, no hedge funds would have lured in trillions of dollars on the hopes of making more than the real inflation rate and we wouldn't be looking down a steep cliff here today.

I fear we are also on the edge of the nastiest cliff in human history: the Hubbert Oil Peak. Everyone imagines they can sweep away the obvious ramifications of this thing by chanting magic numbers and lots of false, madcap words. Hocus--pocus--puddings and pies, wave this wand and inflation dies!

Organic, harsh reality laughs sardonically at all this. Mother Nature has the last word in our affairs and the Grim Reaper sits on her left hand just as the sun, moon and stars sit on her right.

From Prison Planet:

"Despite four years of high oil prices, this report sees increasing market tightness beyond 2010," the IEA said. "It is possible that the supply crunch could be deferred, but not by much."

The IEA, which acts as an energy watchdog for industrialised nations, said Opec would be unable to increase production in line with demand, while the rate of growth in supplies of oil from other producing nations is also set to slow.

In addition, the gas market will face a supply crunch of its own at the turn of the decade, limiting governments' ability to turn to different sources of fuel. Although the production of biofuels is set to double over the next few years, it will remain a marginal source of energy, the IEA said.

Lawrence Eagles, head of the IEA's oil industry and markets division, said: "The results of our analysis are quite strong. Either we need to have more supplies coming on stream or we need to have lower demand growth."

Japan is discussing turning seaweed and rice into gasoline. This is sheer insanity. They know they are in trouble in the long run. They can't feed their people easily without importing food so they will use lots of fuel to import food while buring the food they should be eating, turning it into magical gasoline? How is this going to be? They are a small series of islands with a dense population!

I know what they will do: what they did in the past! They (the samurai overlords) made everyone walk everywhere and there were no wheeled vehicles except for the very top people and no one could harness even oxen or horses to much of anything, everything was on foot! And they even put barriers and stairs on roads so carriages couldn't run most places! What a great future for Japan: burning the rice so the samurai can drive Toyotas while the masses starve to death.

From the Star:

Last year this U.S. deficit amounted to $811.5 billion (U.S.), which meant that every day the U.S. had to attract $2.2 billion in foreign capital to balance its global books. Its net foreign debt now stands at more than $2.7 trillion and could climb to more than $8 trillion just five years from now.
*snip*
Last year roughly 80 per cent of Canada's exports went to the United States. Moreover, we had a big trade surplus with the U.S. – just over $96 billion (Canadian).

In its report, the McKinsey Global Institute looked at one scenario in which the United States tries to eliminate its current account deficit by 2012. To do this, the U.S. dollar would have to depreciate by about 30 per cent from its January level, when it was about 85 U.S. cents.

This would bring the Canadian dollar close to 120 U.S. cents, and as the report spells out, this would hit the Canadian economy hard. In fact, it says, the United States would have to work with Canada, and with Mexico, because of the devastating impact.

This scenario won't happen. If the dollar drops 30% like it did in the '70's, people don't sell us stuff until we can make up the difference. The US lost a lot of power during those years! Russia's borders expanded greatly. They also overspent and went bankrupt before us.

Well, if we want to buy all that oil from Canada and Mexico, we won't be able to becasue the Chinese and Japanese will outbid us and prices will shoot up so gasoline here will be $20 to the gallon! There is a lot of agitation over the Chinese building a deep sea port in Mexico. Some people think this is so China can use cheap Mexican truckers to bring goods here.

FALSE! This is for exchanging Mexican oil for Chinese manufactured goods! How obvious does this have to be? Right now, our energy producing neighbors want to get us into a money treaty whereby we have trade money for them that ISN'T the dollar but is..petro dollars. And these won't appear in America. They will be used only for trade and will be worth much more than the native currency which will inflate like crazy because energy and food will always be excluded from inflation calculations.

Arrest the Federal Reserve and Federal government officials who set up this dumb system! Arrest Bush and Cheney too. Gads.

From the Star:

The cost advantage that Canada and Mexico have enjoyed over the U.S. would vanish. For example, "much of the cost advantage that U.S. automakers have gained by setting up plants in Canada and Mexico, which then import back into the United States, would have been lost under this scenario." It would be cheaper to ship cars from the U.S.

While the McKinsey report believes a gradual decline in the U.S. dollar is more likely, it warns a sudden shock cannot be ruled out and urges U.S. corporations to build this into their planning. It argues that U.S. potential for export growth lies in high-tech industries and knowledge-intensive services so U.S. policies should strengthen these sectors.

This is totally wrong. Because if we could collapse the dollar like we did in the '70's in order to cheat OPEC, this works only if we still rule the Seven Seas and aren't bankrupt. This works only if Mexico and Canada had no other possible customers. But the yuan is strengthening, not weakening. It is going up, not down. The Dragon already courts both Mexico and Canada and it listens closely to their complaints and desires and it is most anxious to be friendly with both.

The yen is dying. The Japanese can't lure in future customers like the Chinese if they don't protect their currency from total debasement by the American inflationary legions from Hell!

Culture of Life News Main Page

$100 A Barrel Oil: Hubbert Oil Peak, Here We Come!

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Aussie defense minister admits the US empire and they invaded Iraq seeking oil. This means all the leaders who did this are war criminals. Arrest them all. And hang them. Also, Russia, China, Venezuela and Iran all have a very interesting evolving relationship that involves a lot of triangulation with the European and American imperial powers. And oil reserves are dropping while oil prices rise. We are near the Hubbert Oil Peak indeed. Norway's energy tzar thinks oil will be $100 a barrel in the near, not far, future. I agree.

From the BBC:

Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has admitted that securing oil supplies is a key factor behind the presence of Australian troops in Iraq.

He said maintaining "resource security" in the Middle East was a priority.

But PM John Howard has played down the comments, saying it was "stretching it a bit" to conclude that Australia's Iraq involvement was motivated by oil.

In WWII, the Japanese military moved rapidly to conquer the various islands in the Pacific and Southeast Asia in order to take the oil pumping lands like Indoesia, Vietnam, Burma and others from the European colonial powers of France, Britain and the Netherlands so they could run their war machine in China and Korea. Of course, France and the Netherlands could't stop Japan, they were conquered by Japan's ally, Germany. And the British empire was a paper tiger, destroyed in WWI, unable to finance even a defensive action much less, conquering other nations.

When the US, a country that imported no oil back then, a country with one of the world's biggest known oil reserves at that time, when we defeated Japan after dropping some nukes on them, won WWII, we declared the invasions of all the oil pumping colonies to be illegal and a war crime and we hung the admirals and generals who did this.

We didn't hang the Emperor because he was a weasel who happily submitted himself to our domination in the hopes of regaining the upper hand. Congratulations, your Eminence. You won in the end.

But of course, the news from Australia is dangerous for the war criminals there! Admitting the sole reason we all invaded Iraq was to loot the oil is a war crime! Duh! So everyone has gone to great lengths including the so-called opposition party in the US, the Democrats, to deny we invaded seeking oil. When everyone noticed the name of our illegal invasion was 'Operation Iraqi Liberation' the Pentagon swiftly changed one word so it wouldn't be so blatant.

The destructive war we chose to wage was for all the foreign powers who use Iraqi oil. The US used none back when we invaded and we use very little of it today. Most of it flows to all the previous empires in Europe and Asia. Our internationalist oil companies are happily pumping this oil and reaping the profits but this is the world's most expensive oil. We have spent over half a trillion dollars and thousands of casualties to get these profits that don't benefit the averge American.

Certainly, the oil is a curse on the poor people living in Iraq! And our leaders certainly are war criminals and should be arrested and hung.

From Aftenposten, Norway:

A leading Norwegian economist and one of the oil-producing country's major investors think oil prices will keep rising until alternative energy starts paying off. That can mean prices of more than USD 100 a barrel within a few years.

Spot prices for North Sea oil went over USD 74 a barrel on Tuesday. Some analysts think they'll keep rising, as the summer driving season gets underway in both North America and Europe.
*snip*
Moreover, he notes, there's little sign of any new large sources of oil coming on line. "I have difficulty seeing where a lot of new oil will come from," Juel told Dagens Næringsliv.

$74 a barrel: what did the dollar do this last week, this last month, this last year? Dying, isn't it? I sound like Yoda. Well, dying it is! And using the Force won't fix this double trouble problem. It all goes back to the issue of the US being the world's reserve currency while the US tries stupid monetarist tricks to cut back on our red ink only this causes more red ink since we import 70% of our energy. I repeat this number so often because it is the key to our entire financial mess.

Namely, we are consuming more than we can afford and our actions are weakening our currency which is causing this key import to rise in price thus raising our trade deficit to the sky and the more we kill the dollar trying to kill the trade deficit... THE WORSE IT GETS!

This is called a negative feedback loop. And we can escape it only one way: to tax oil imports until it gets too expensive for people to buy it anymore.

This will, of course, destroy modern America that is an oil based society. I would strongly suggest rationing gasoline, for example. And then people who use little gas can sell their coupons to gas guzzlers and reap the profits! I would love that, being a gas miser maniac. I will happily ride the horse, peddle a bicycle and walk as well as drive my little gas miser midget vehicles! And so it goes: this will never happen. The powers ruling us will not do something that might reward the savers, the penny pinching people who are careful.

From WTRG:

The U.S. petroleum industry's price has been heavily regulated through production or price controls throughout much of the twentieth century. In the post World War II era U.S. oil prices at the wellhead have averaged $23.57 per barrel adjusted for inflation to 2006 dollars. In the absence of price controls the U.S. price would have tracked the world price averaging $25.56. Over the same post war period the median for the domestic and the adjusted world price of crude oil was $18.43 in 2006 prices. That means that only fifty percent of the time from 1947 to 2006 have oil prices exceeded $18.43 per barrel.

Until the March 28, 2000 adoption of the $22-$28 price band for the OPEC basket of crude, oil prices only exceeded $23.00 per barrel in response to war or conflict in the Middle East. With limited spare production capacity OPEC has abandoned its price band and for close to three years was powerless to stem a surge in oil prices which was reminiscent of the late 1970s.

The relentless rise in oil prices have been aggravated by first, the illegal invasion of Iraq by the consortium of former and present empires in the West, the brutal, greedy crews that tormented the earth for several hundered years. They think nothing of wiping out 90% of the population of a land they invade. These brutal people came in, talking about democracy and freedom and spread death, destruction and tyranny as history clearly shows.

When Europe and America invaded China, instead of peace, prosperity and trade, China burned to the ground, all the cities destroyed, chaos and starvation ruled the lands and the battle to take back itself from foreigners mercilessly looting and enslaving them took 100 years and only in the last 30 have the Chinese begun to rebuild and find new wealth!

So oil prices rose because Iraq's oil was interrupted by wars. Then the US led its band of fellow European imperial invaders into a scheme to attack and destroy Iran and kill off the majority of the people there. This requires forcing Iran to not be able to sell oil.

So...world oil prices rise! Who would have guessed? And American oil giants get much, much richer. The downside is, our empire's core is being destroyed by all this. Geeze. Paradoxes abound!

From the history of oil production article:

In mid 2002, there was over 6 million barrels per day of excess production capacity, but by mid 2003 the excess was below 2 million. During much of 2004 and 2005 the spare capacity to produce oil has been under one million barrels per day. A million barrels per day is not enough spare capacity to cover an interruption of supply from almost any OPEC producer. In a world that consumes over 80 million barrels per day of petroleum products that adds a significant risk premium to crude oil price and is largely responsible for prices in excess of $40 per barrel.

This article is from 2005. Oil prices have doubled since then. The blockbuster oil producing nations are all beginning to flag and despite a revolution in the technology of oil exploration and drilling, the world production numbers are beginning to show the effects of the Hubbert Oil Peak. If Venezuela, Russia, China and Iran all get the top equipment and can pump at will, prices will fall for a while but the days of oil and roses are now over. Whoever has oil in the future will have tremendous pricing power as well as wealth. And no nation that is small and pumping oil will survive the attacks of oil-hungry empires except those oil pumping nations that ARE empires already: Russia.

Namely, only big nations with oil and nuclear missiles can control the price of oil and the rate of exploitation because the biggest nuclear power, the USA, will invade or intimidate all others. Looking at the diplomacy and deals being made by two top targets of American invasion and domination, Venezuela and Iran, it is clear how subterranean forces are working, hidden from view. Namely, China's rising influence and power can be applied on all the other global imperial powers to protect or control vital oil resources and oil pumping nations.

For example, the Chinese have been heavily courting the Saudi Arabian royals. In addition, they protect Iran. They want to become the peace makers, the deal makers in the explosive politics of the oil-rich Gulf region nations. The collapse of American power in Iraq has profound implications for the US. The biggest being, the rise in world oil prices while the dollar falls and the yuan climbs. Delusions that China will keep trading with us like the Japanese are dead wrong for China has a potential customer base...at home...that dwarfs the US and Japan's population bases combined. The rising yuan is being used to buy oil and instead of wasting US dollars that buy less and less oil, China is using yuan.

The desire of Venezuela and Iran to cease trading in dollars is part of the long-range desire of China who hopes to eventually be the ruler of the Seven Seas and issuer of global fiat currency. I do believe they will achieve this great goal of theirs. Thanks to the US abusing our ability to buy energy via fiat dollars, of course.

This is all our own fault. We did the invasions, we broke international law, we are the war mongers seeking wealth and power and are rapidly losing both.

From the International Herald Tribune:

Venezuela has agreed to sell gasoline to Iran, the South American county's energy minister said in comments published Tuesday, a week after the Islamic country imposed a fuel rationing program that has sparked violence.

The US and European colonial powers tried to strangle the Iranian Kitty. And it retaliated by forming a better alliance with Venezuela. If we want to kill this Kitty and the Venezuelans, we have to give China a boon, a benefit, a powerful goody. Like, say, Taiwan. China is toying with us and we are being set up for something big.

From the Washington Post:

The presidents of Iran and Venezuela launched construction of a joint petrochemical plant on Monday, strengthening an "axis of unity" between two oil-rich nations staunchly opposed to the United States.

OPEC died with Russia began selling energy outside of OPEC. This crushed their ability to control prices and profits collapsed. Only after the US, led by a President put in power by desperate oil barons in Texas as well as Zionists seeking to destroy Saddam, we made war and of course, this caused world oil prices to soar and this pleases Bush and his gang no end except it is bankrupting our nation.

From Agence France Presse:

China's UN envoy urged the international community Tuesday to boost diplomatic efforts to end the nuclear standoff with Iran, saying the time was not yet right for new sanctions.

"I believe we have to put more emphasis on the diplomatic track," ambassador Wang Guangya said at a news conference.

A new OPEC is rising. It revolves around....RUSSIA. And is sheltered by China. Who wants all that lovely energy for itself. At a reasonable price.

Here is the hysterical Washington Post headline about this: Iran, Venezuela in "axis of unity" against U.S

The WP is the world's most irresponsible war mongering rag since the Völkischer Beaobachter of Nazi Germany. They are grinding their fangs over this news. Just when they gleefully got some little chaos going in Iran, it gets stopped! Rats, they scream as they beat their horns against the walls of the offices of the CIA-infested paper.

From the Guardian:

Russia warned today that it would position its rockets close to the Polish border and point missiles at US bases in Europe if Washington rebuffed its latest offer of cooperation on missile defence.
Russia's hawkish first deputy prime minister, Sergei Ivanov, made it clear that Moscow would be forced "to respond" if the Bush administration snubbed Vladimir Putin's offer to work together on missile defence using a Soviet-era radar base.

"If our proposal is not accepted we will take adequate measures. An asymmetrical and effective response will be found," he said. This response would include basing "new rocket forces in the European part of Russia" in the enclave of Kaliningrad, he said. The Russian missiles would be able to "parry the threats that will arise from the [US] missile defence system," he added.

As always, I read the diplomatic tea leaves correctly. I knew that Putin came to the US only to demonstrate that Bush Sr and Jr are war mongers who wish to destroy Russia. He made them a very carefully drawn up proposal. Our violent war criminal leaders wanted to pretend rockets in Poland were for the Iranian Kitty way south of Poland. If this were even slightly true or sane, we would be giving these things to...TURKEY.

But we have no intention of this. Bush and the madcap Poles want it in Poland, facing Russia! And Russia would be insane to let this happen. The ugly history of use of Poland as a door for invading one way or the other by all the Powers is long and putting missile there won't stop it, it will merely mean Poland will be very radioactive in the future and only strange mutated creatures will live there. So why is all this happening?

Well, the US and Europe, when communism fell, immediately began to destroy Russia. They did to Russia what they did 100 years earlier to China. They do this all the time. When the Spanish came to the New World, they immediately set off to find the heart of the government there and kill everyone and steal all the treasures. They destroyed two copper-age empires this way.

So it was with Russia: the minute they were weak, the other empires poured in and began to rend the place apart and steal everything and the Russian people began to starve to death, flee as refugees, or were filled with despair and disease. Well, under Putin, this stopped.

So now, we need to threaten Russia again.

From Ireland:

Technology developed by an Irish firm that allegedly defies basic laws of physics to produce free power today goes on public display for the first time.

Steorn is challenging worldwide cynicism over its claims to have stumbled upon a revolutionary discovery that creates clean, constant energy and could end the global fuel crisis.

While 22 scientists continue their exhaustive tests on the Orbo technology the inventors are asking the public to come and see a demonstration for themselves at Kinetica Museum, Spitalfields Market, London.

And the hunt for the magic white hart continues. An energy system that we can use forever and will give us infinite power. Alas, the true engine of such power is a black hole as the subhead of this blog remarks.

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